Add a Dockerfile

The final task is to add a Dockerfile and to build the container.

Create the file ~/.node-red/projects/<name-of-project>/Dockerfile with the following contents:

FROM node:lts as build

RUN apt-get update \
  && apt-get install -y build-essential

WORKDIR /data

COPY ./package.json /data/

RUN npm install

COPY ./settings.js /data/
COPY ./flows.json /data/
COPY ./flows_cred.json /data/

## Release image

FROM node:lts-slim
RUN apt-get update

RUN mkdir -p /data

COPY --from=build /data /data

WORKDIR /data

ENV PORT 1880
ENV NODE_ENV=production
ENV NODE_PATH=/data/node_modules
EXPOSE 1880
CMD ["npm", "start"]

This Dockerfile has two parts. It first creates a build image using the latest node:lts image. It installs the build tools, copies in the project's package.json ,installs all of the node modules and then copies in the remaining project files.

After that, it creates the real image using the node:lts-slim image - a smaller base image. It copies over the required parts from the build image, sets up some default environment variables and then runs Node-RED.

Building the image

To build the image, run the following command from the ~/.node-red/projects/<name-of-project>/ directory:

docker build . -t node-red-photobooth

This will take a few minutes the first time you run it as it will have to download the base images. Subsequent runs will be quicker as those downloads are cached.

Running the image locally

Once built, you can test the image locally by running:

docker run -p 9000:1880 --name photobooth node-red-photobooth

Once that runs, you will be able to open http://localhost:9000 to access the photo booth dashboard.

Cleaning up Docker

To stop the running image, you can run the command:

docker stop photobooth

To delete the container, run:

docker rm photobooth

To delete the image, run:

docker rmi node-red-photobooth